Ladies’ basic freedoms polka

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  • #3850
    Judith
    Participant

      Oh! wonderful, wonderful new video clip – don’t you love that little look on his face when he’s just said "… take the piss out of them" on one of Auntie’s live programmes? 😉 🙂

      I was intrigued to hear two verses I haven’t heard before, the ones beginning "Even though 13 years have passed…" and "Thirteen years and much the same…". These aren’t in the lyric we have on file, as far as I know. Have we got them transcribed?

      #3851
      Gordon
      Keymaster

        Glad you enjoyed the clip.

        I’ll be adding the new verses to the appropriate page.
        [i]
        Even though thirteen years have passed
        Same old caper, same silly farce
        Same old cliques, same old shrieks
        Same old piercing pains in arse

        The ladies of…

        Thirteen years and much the same
        Women are everywhere in chains
        And the escapades of the daft brigades
        Dismay, deride, demean, defame

        They are the ladies of the neighbourhood
        They are fighting for the rights of womanhood
        By taking what they feel to be
        Their fundamental dignity.[/i]

        Thanks to Ian Burdon for the transcription.

        #3852
        Judith
        Participant

          Gordon wrote:

          . . . . . . . . . . . .
          Dismay, deride, demean, defame

          They are the ladies of the neighbourhood
          They are fighting for the rights of womanhood
          By taking what they feel to be
          Their fundamental dignity.[/i]

          That’s great, Ian. After posting I listened several more times and had a go at transcribing, but was foxed by several words in the the first of the new verses, which you have got.

          But although I don’t for a moment suppose my hearing is better than yours, I still beg to differ from you on the final quatrain. I am hearing it as a run-on from the previous line as follows:

          The other ladies of the neighbourhood
          Who fight for the rights of womanhood

          My justification is that this is making the point he makes in his subsequent chat, about how the antics of the daft brigades doing more harm than good to the cause of women’s liberation.

          See what the rest of you think…..

          :unsure:

          Post edited by: Judith, at: 2004/06/23 13:06

          #3869
          KeithD
          Keymaster

            A gem of a clip, Gordon. Thanks.

            Judith proposed

            The other ladies of the neighbourhood
            Who fight for the rights of womanhood

            Agree wholly with the second line.

            The first line is very close, because both versions would tend to sound very similar when sung by Jake, but the vowel at the end of the first word does make it sound quite a bit more like "The" than like "They". Also, on balance I think the logic better supports Judith’s reading.

            The logic is that the whole song is taking the piss out of the loony brigade, up to this verse, but the other ladies in this verse are taking their fundamental "dignity" and so presumably are not to be lumped together with the bottom-pinching loony brigade.

            Apologies to the Tramfest LBFP freestyle corps.

            Post edited by: keithd, at: 2004/06/26 23:39

            #3881
            richardshields
            Participant

              And the escapades of the daft brigades
              Dismay, deride, demean, defame
              The other the ladies of the neighbourhood
              Who are fighting for the rights of womanhood

              Agree with Judith and Keith – perhaps the best illustration is to isolate the last two lines of the previous verse and link them – as Judith suggests – with the first two lines of the last verse.

              #3882
              Ian Burdon
              Participant

                My transcription was taken from a DVD copy of the clip which was sent to me by a Topica member and which I passed to Gordon who then put it on this board. Having read this discussion I have just played through the DVD again expecting to have to buckle beneath the combined expertise of Judith, Keith and Richard.

                I remain convinced, however, that in respect of the first line in question I am correct – ie ‘they are’ rather than ‘the other’ although I concede that it is marginal. As regards the second line, this is clearly a mistranscription on my part but just as I interpolated ‘they are’ neither does he vocalise ‘who are fighting’ – he says ‘fight’ leaving us to surmise that there is an implict ‘who’ in there.

                I don’t agree with the textual analysis below either – I don’t think that a contrast is being set up as Keith suggests; one could equally argue that he is in fact setting up an ironic contrast between intent (and self-delusion) and the actual effect and therefore ‘they are’ remains perfectly consistent.

                Cheers

                Ian

                #3883
                Judith
                Participant

                  Ah well! Ian, since you are the one of those engaged in this discussion who is most likely actually to perform these verses, I don’t think you’ll even have to flex your knee, let alone buckle! :dry: :rolleyes:

                  My next question is, how and when did these two verses come about, were they a one-off performance, why weren’t they on record previously? Anyone got any history?

                  Judith

                  #3884
                  Paul
                  Keymaster

                    To answer Judith’s questions, the performance needs placing in context. The clip is from a show by Noel Edmonds, called something like ‘That was the year’ or ‘What was the year?’. It was on television in the early eighties (roughly 83-84; I remember seeing this clip when it was first shown). Each week the programme would look back at news items, personalities, issues, fashions etc. from a particular year. My guess would be that Jake wrote the additional verses as a special one-off for this particular programme – updating the song and switching between the original and the new performance provided a nice gimmick for the programme. I would doubt therefore whether the song was ever performed in this version again, particularly not as Jake was not particularly fond of ‘point numbers’ like this.

                    This programme certainly came after the And Songs television series, and this was the last time I saw Jake on television. Does anyone know whether he had any TV appearances after 83-84?

                    As as aside, Noel was something of a fan of Jake’s, I think. He also had him performing live on his Sunday morning radio 1 programme round about the same time (I remember Noel interrupting On Again On Again, joking that you couldn’t use words like a posteriori on Sunday morning radio).

                    Hope that this helps!

                    Paul

                    #3885
                    Paul
                    Keymaster

                      My apologies for the horrifically large (and largely horrific) photo. I didn’t expect it to be quite as big as that…

                      Paul

                      #3887
                      Judith
                      Participant

                        Good to have you among us, Paul, and thanks for your answers to my questions.

                        Now I’ve another one : how on earth did you get your picture up there?
                        The facility for uploading files and images is a new one, and I haven’t managed to make it work yet. I can happily cope with your face on screen if you can tell us how to put ours up there too!

                        #3888
                        Malcy
                        Participant

                          Paul’s cool – his kids are cute, anyway !

                          #3889
                          Paul
                          Keymaster

                            If you click on the reply button and go to the reply screen, replete with emoticons, just beneatht the submit button there is a box labelled ‘select image file to attach’. Find your image file using the browse button to the right, double click on it, and the name of the file should appear in the box just below the submit button. Then press submit (or, if you wish, preview), and voila (minus grave accent). Here’s one that I prepared earlier (for Malcy)…

                            Hope this helps
                            Paul

                            #3890
                            Paul
                            Keymaster

                              Drat, there was meant to be a picture there. Let’s try again, shall we?

                              #3891
                              Paul
                              Keymaster

                                Take 3. The file name was unacceptable, so I’ll try again…

                                #3892
                                Judith
                                Participant

                                  Oops! I thought you were a new boy – obviously your horrifically large picture made your face less than familiar – sorry 😡 It was the pic of your lovely littles which put me right.

                                  But you’ve obviously been having some false starts too – and I had been doing just what you describe without success. perhaps my pic was too large. Here goes again.

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